TWO THINGS TO HELP GROW YOUR FOLLOWING AS A CREATIVE

So as an artist and a creator, social media for you is a must. I remember when I was first getting started posting stuff online, if I could make the analogy of a pie. If I was giving somebody a pie, really what I was giving them is just the crust. There was no filling, nothing for anybody to actually grab a hold of and.

Sink their teeth into.

And so everything just fell flat and.

People would just leave.

So I came to the conclusion that to build a following, you have to think about two things. And I'll give you a hint. It's not SEO or hashtags. It's engagement and trust. So are you getting good?

Engage.

And how do you know if you are? And if you aren't, how do you create more engaging content for your current followers so that when new people come in, they can trust you enough to jump on and sign onto your community right away?

So let's talk about it.

Hey, friend. I'm Lennon with soundandpatterns.com and on this channel I want to share my personal experiences with artists and creators like you to help you build an audience around.

The art that you want to create.

So I've been a musician all my life. I've been very lucky to tour all over the world and do a lot of really fun, cool things. And now I spend a lot of time working with creators, helping them clarify their message and their brand so they can then build an audience around their art form. So since I've been focusing a lot on YouTube, I now want to get back into my Instagram account and really try to grow that. I thought this was a good time to kind of share this content with you guys. And it is starting to get dark here, so I'm gonna head back into the apartment.

Alright. So you have to forgive me, I know this lighting is kind of terrible, but we'll deal with it. So how do we know if we're getting good engagement? Scrunch.com supplies the following rates to give you a good idea of what engagement looks like on Instagram and what actual healthy metrics are. So less than 1% of your followers liking or commenting on your content is a really low engagement rate. Between 1 and 3.5 is average and between 3.5 and 6 is high. Anything over 6 is actually really, really good. And here's a really simple way to figure out what that percentage is for you take all the posts that you've put out in the last two weeks and take that number and add up all of your likes and comments. So let's say you put out 14 posts over the last two weeks. Right. Add up all the likes and comments for those 14 posts. Then you're going to divide that number that you just got by those number of posts. So 14 in this example. Okay. Now that you have the average engagement per post, I want you to then divide that number by how many followers you have, and then you're going to times that number by 100 to get a percentage. Now, this will usually be between 0 and 10%. As we said, anything over 6 is really, really good. Anything under 6 varies. Okay.

Now, knowing that I want to give.

You something that helps you raise that percentage, I want you to write that percentage down somewhere so that after this two weeks where you block off some good engagement time, you can really see whether or not you've grown. And here's something I think about all the time. With platforms like Instagram and YouTube talking about getting rid of likes and being able to see how many subscribers people have, all those social proof metrics that we have, I think it's more important than ever for us to think about how we get people to comment and actually engage in conversations in our content. I want to think about how good conversations actually come about. For me, good conversations start with the people that I actually know, and if I don't know them, then there's a good chance that I feel like I do. Like we have, you know, something in common. So many times when we're putting stuff.

Out online, we're not giving them the.

Signals or the information to let them know whether or not they are like us. So I want to make sure that we're giving that information so that we can avoid people skimming past our content and get them to actually engage. Now, the biggest way for you to do this is by telling your story and then to take it one level deeper to not only tell your story, but invite them to be a part of that story, engage with them, and allow them to converse with you on the subject matter. So I'm going to give you a quick outline of what a story is and how we can build out one for your captions and your content. Okay, so a story goes as follows. A character wants something, has to overcome something to get it, and then it's transformed by the process. So when you're ironing out your content or your caption, lead with a question. Whatever the subject is, lead with the question. So my question might be, what brings you joy Right away, we're inviting them into the conversation and giving them an opportunity to engage with us. So now let's build out our actual story. And by the way, the photo that I'm using here I got from deathtothestockphoto.com which is an awesome website. You guys should check it out. It's not a sponsored video by any means, but very, very cool stock images. Okay, so let's say for this example that I'm an artist and I just finished a sculpture and I'm going to use these three story points to build out my caption. So a character wants something. What does this character want? Let's say that I want to make work that reminds me, people and myself of the depth that life has to offer. Character has to overcome something to get it. Maybe I have to overcome anxiety and this constant feeling that I'm never enough is transformed by the process. When a work is finished, I'm able to look at it and be reminded that the deep water is actually where the magic is. It takes depth for me to be reminded of how to show depth to other people in their lives. Alright, so I might say something like the following and I have written this on my phone here because I like to be prepared. My work is intended to show people that their life has meaning. I want people to look at my art and see the depth and be reminded that there is depth in their own life no matter what the circumstance is that they're going through. This piece, as simple as it looks, took me six weeks to finish. Anxiety and fear took over, preventing me from moving forward. I was so afraid that whatever I ended up making wasn't going to do what it was intended to do, and ultimately I was afraid that I wasn't good enough. Last night I finished this piece and hung it up on the wall before a dinner date with friends. When they came over, they immediately commented on the piece, asking if I had made it, and when I said yes, I had such a joy in my heart. The simple fact that they noticed what I had made reminded me how lucky I am to do what I do. I told them what the work was meant to accomplish and we got into the most amazing conversation about things that.

That we're going through.

And I realized for this art to actually accomplish what I wanted it to accomplish, I first had to go through the deep water myself. It took getting through deep fear to make a piece of art that made for some really great and deep conversation. And that deep fear has now turned into a deep sense of joy. So let me know in the comments below if this caption would have made you more likely to engage or leave a comment or on my Instagram account. And creating content like this is a simple idea, but it's not really easy to execute. And that's why I created something called the Connection Blueprint, which is a foolproof guide to creating content and captions that connect with your audience. It's a free download that you can get in the description below, and it's basically a writing exercise that teaches you how to tell better stories and how to implement your own emotions and be more vulnerable within those stories. And now that you know how to tell better stories, go watch this video where I kind of flip the script and talk about why thinking about growing your social media isn't really that important. This was a mind shift for me that helped me completely change the way I thought about what other people were making and how I had to either keep up or not keep up with them. So I think this is really valuable. Click on that video and I'll see you over there.